Here in my Pontiac, I can pump my stereo too loud

Here In Your Bedroom - Goldfin...

By Neal Dusedau

"Here in Your Bedroom" was featured on a mixtape I made when I first got my drivers license the summer before my junior year. Thanks to Nick Hornby and a slew of internet imitators, I've now read all too much on the art of the mixtape. Unfortunately, back in high school I wasn't cool enough to have read High Fidelity and I didn't have those valuable innate mixtape instincts. Thus, "Here in Your Bedroom" was sandwiched between the New Jersey high school special, "Carry on My Wayward Son" and the worst song of all time, "More than Words" by Extreme (as in Extremely terrible).

During my drive to school I was happy to listen to these cheeseball staples in the privacy of my car (windows rolled firmly UP), but the last block before the parking lot was time to show how tough you were-- to show how much you kicked ass (a high school feeling to be sure), and "More Than Words" wasn't going to get it done. Time to rewind the tape and let Goldfinger do the talking: I would whip around that last curve and barrel into the parking lot fifteen miles above the speed limit, windows DOWN, blasting the so-cal pop ska/punk of Goldfinger. It made me feel so cool, which is hilarious. What did I think I was proving? And if anyone did hear the song, they weren't going to think, "wow, that guy is punk as fuck." No, they'd think, "wow, didn't that song stop being popular two year ago?" I wasn't playing the Dead Boys, The Clash or even the Sex Pistols. I was playing the 90s equivalent of surf rock.

In retrospect, my choice of tough-guy song makes absolutely no sense-- like everything else from high school. Two years earlier, in 9th grade, I made an overly conscious decision to reject grunge and become a punk rocker. I bought Black Flag and Fugazi records and got pulled into the older alterna-kids scene (Thanks Winnie!). Yet, here I was two years older and I was trying to be intimidating with a really catchy top-40 ska hit. Now I'm not saying Black Flag is particularly better than Goldfinger (Yes, yes I am), but at least if you blast "My War" out of your car window you're making a statement.
Why did I pick such a soft song to rest my testosterone against? I owned the real "angry teenager" records, but I guess I'm just a sappy emo kid at heart... Or maybe a "monsters of guitar rock" kid? I mean, "More than words," really? How did that song end up on the mix? Did I hate myself back then?

Listening to "Here in Your Bedroom" now is pretty confusing. I assumed I would just hate the song, but just like a ditty from their Cali brothers, Sublime, I can still bop my head to it. "Here in your bedroom I feel safe from the outside, I can tell that you're changing, but still I feel so high." It's this (low) level of introspection that makes the song perfect for sixteen-year-olds. At that age you either had a girl's bedroom that you could spend hours doing absolutely nothing in or you were desperate to be invited into one. And, like everything in high school, it might have felt like forever for a moment, but a day later she had moved on and you were stuck feeling like an asshole. Not terribly deep, but something I could relate to at the time. And if you didn't get the theme in the verse, the chorus really breaks it down for you, "When I wake up tomorrow will you still feel the same? When I wake up tomorrow will you have changed... Cuz I still feel the same! Cuz I still feel the same! I, I still feel the same!"

Um, I wonder if he still feels the same? I also wonder if the owner of said bedroom broke up with him because he was so nervous about her feelings changing?